THE GEOLOGICAL HISTORY OF 

 THE PRIMATES 



By a. G. Thacker, A.R.C.S. 



Human palaeontology is the most fashionable of the sciences. 

 It is notorious that during the last twenty years most branches 

 of biological science have suffered an eclipse in public interest. 

 The gradual cessation of the great controversies, partly scientific 

 and partly philosophical, which raged during the later decades 

 of the nineteenth century left the educated world somewhat 

 sated with discussions of organic evolution. It was perhaps 

 perceived that latterly nothing very essential or very reliable 

 was being added to those first great revelations which Lyell 

 and Darwin had given to the world, and public attention 

 was diverted into other directions, towards other sciences, such 

 as physics or psychology, or away from science altogether. But 

 in this eclipse of biology, the study of prehistoric man has not 

 shared. The progress of research into the geological aspects 

 of human evolution has never lost its interest with the educated 

 public ; since Darwin's time, the importance of the subject has 

 been readily realised by all persons of intelligence ; and thus a 

 human fossil is always in the fashion. Who could have avoided 

 hearing of Piltdown ? And even the Broken Hill Skull has 

 been able for a few weeks to compete successfully with Freud 

 and Einstein. 



And yet, keen as this interest is, both among the onlookers 

 and among the numerous band of investigators it ceases sud- 

 denly at a certain point. The investigation is pushed back 

 behind the Neolithic Age and into the Pleistocene Period, in 

 which high savage races are found, having a wonderful art. 

 We pass Neandertal man — a name now familiar to every jour- 

 nalist — the enigmatic Piltdown relics, and the Heidelberg Jaw ; 

 finally in the Pliocene we reach the famous Ape-Man of Java, 

 Pithecanthropus. With him the interest and enthusiasm reach 

 their climax ; but with him also the enthusiasm suddenly 

 ceases. This is the case not only with the general reader, but 

 even with the great majority of those who have taken a serious 

 part in the progress of prehistoric anthropology. The Ape-Man 

 is taken for granted. He is the beginning. He is classed as a 



595 



